Use these strategies for student engagement to grab and keep students’ attention today. These simple but powerful strategies will spark enthusiasm in you and every student in your classroom to make this your best year ever! You’re writing on board during class and you hear a loud sigh. You quickly
I love this rounding anchor chart for upper elementary classrooms. My students reference it a lot as we’ve been reviewing place value and number sense during math. I hear them reading and repeating the rounding poem at random times during the day – not at all bad! The Rounding Anchor
The leap from adding and subtracting to beginning multiplication is always HUGE for students! Many of my students admitted to feeling excited and motivated to learn, while several other students admitted to feeling scared and worried. Of course I had to follow up with, “What are you worried about?” The
Bulletin Boards in my classroom need to be workhorses – meaning that they serve a purpose – not just be cute! I have posters displayed that I refer to constantly during class. My classroom is on the small side, so bulletin board space is very, very valuable real estate in
Performing 2-digit multiplication is tough stuff that requires a lot of practice and repetition (and repetition and repetition). In the past, I’ve taught many methods, including the box, partial products, lattice, and traditional algorithm. Some students catch on quickly and easily adapt to the range of methods, while others struggle
My last several weeks has been quite eye opening. Imagine – my students don’t understand FRACTIONS! They haven’t been able to make sense of the idea that a fraction is typically smaller than 1 whole, despite having large numbers in the numerator and/or denominator. I was also quite surprised to
Help students answer constructed response questions as they cite evidence from the text. Learn how to use writing stems in class. Something that’s often repeated during reading class is “Cite your evidence” and “You need to PROVE your answer.” In addition, state test questions often ask students to “use
How do you stay organized with your daily lessons – and planning ahead? One quick and easy way that I’ve learned – that actually WORKS for me – is using Color-Coded Files for my daily lesson plans. I will admit that I spend WAY too long planning my lessons and
